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Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

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Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#141

It'd be funny if the engineers at reddit decided now was a good time to upgrade postgres or do some other kind of scheduled maintenance, and just not worry about downtime because the blackout is on anyway.

Unless there is some serious damage control happening from corporate which makes them unable, I think a team of engineers would talk themselves into doing this 99% of the time.

I don't see any damage control... they're still committed to the "Apollo sucks" line:

> Mr. Rathschmidt added that some apps are more efficient and require significantly fewer A.P.I. calls and that “Apollo is notably less efficient than other third-party apps.”

Source: https://archive.ph/y92P7#selection-681.0-681.173

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#142

It seems that Reddit will go down like Digg did.

Unfortunately, I've been hearing this for like a decade and it doesn't seem to ever happen.

Exactly the same comments have been made about Twitter, and Twitter is still here.

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#143
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does that really accomplish? To borrow from another comment buried below: I think the company cares more about the appearance of "business as usual" in the face of an IPO than the opinions of the users. In their eyes, this is all nothing more than a tempest in a teapot; a small pothole on the road to public investor dollars.

I can sort of understand the mentality, but right now Reddit looks like a terrible IPO prospect. It isn't profitable, it's poorly managed, lacks transparency, depends on volunteers to function on a daily basis, and when they make a move to make themselves profitable their user base rebels in a fairly public and humiliating way. All of this in the post-Fed rate hike world where money isn't free. Besides I feel it's im…

> depends on volunteers to function on a daily basis

it depends on volunteers to function at all. Posters and commenters are volunteer too, which is something reddit oft seems to forget.

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone doubts that Reddit could pretty easily unlock those subs, but without mods there to run them it would be a legal nightmare. How long before illegal material was flooding the site beyond the capacity of the admins alone to manage? I'd also worry that if Reddit moved in that direction, the mods would feel like they didn't have control over their own subs and bail. I don't believe that Reddit can af…

Today we learned that r/css hasn’t had any functioning mods in many years, yet it hasn’t been over run, yet.

Yeah... I'm not shocked that a CSS sub with 100k subbed isn't exactly raucous. I suspect that the same can't be said for r/worldnews or the other giants.

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a guess from a former reddit dev. > (I used to work as a backend developer at Reddit - I left 6 years ago but I doubt the way things work has changed much) > I think it's extremely unlikely that this is deliberate. The way that Reddit builds "mixed" subreddit listings (where you see posts from multiple subreddits, like users' front pages) is inefficient and strange, and relies heavily on multiple layers of cac…

Unrelated, but any way to get a tildes invite these days? I asked on Reddit but then shut my sub down and have avoided going back

Exact same boat here.

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#146
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would a better protest be rapidly switching subreddits from public/private?

A better protest would have been for the moderators to all stop moderating. Turn off their automod filters, allow all posts. Show reddit what happens when their volunteer moderators just stop.

every sub would then be nothing but onlyfans ads or similar spam

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subreddit experience is bifurcated into (at least) two camps: big/popular/default or small/curated/niche. The tyrannical behaviors are most often found in the former camp where being a moderator is synonymous with “internet power”. The latter is populated by enthusiasts tending to their communities. I agree that Reddit won’t be the same after this, but there’s just not a ton of remaining value in the big defaults…

I think the problem as somebody creating content for or moderating one of those small communities is - do you really want your users to be forced to be used a community as abusive as Reddit towards its users? Do you really want to have your labours exploited by Reddit for their profit? I’m not sure what the alternative is though. Independent websites? Where are dejected Redditors going to go?

Alternatives mega thread: https://0.0g.gg/?58ed6f6429ac61aa#DQse3Hh6Cr4pw6BFRGf7MeWgPY...

I'm currently using kbin. Waiting for Tildes to come out of beta.

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#148
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be chaos. Most of the big subreddits have a combination of bespoke bots and complex automod configs that even the current mods struggle groking. Reddit would lose a ton of quality through poor moderation quickly if you put everything up for grabs. I think this would be a poor move.

Looking at /r/all today, it seems like there's still enough big front-page subs with mods to at least temporarily reallocate responsibilities. Most of the big subs are controlled by "power mods" already who administrate many subs. I think there would absolutely be a significant longer term loss of quality, but my guess is that in the shorter term Reddit could just give the keys to those subs to the 'power mods' who h…

You have to wonder what those mods get out of it, considering they're doing what essentially amounts to a nearly full-time job for free.

There's an unconfirmed but strong possibility that Ghislaine Maxwell was one of the largest power mods on Reddit. https://kirbysommers.substack.com/p/evidence-that-reddit-use...

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